After a tough time in the US, Indian IT companies may bear the brunt of a crackdown by the Australian government on visas. It may be contemplating to increase its local hiring, reports Kritika Saxena of CNBC-TV18.

With elections happening in Australia, some people say that this could be just rhetoric.

But, the Federal Government is coming down heavily on the overuse of 457 visas. These visas are similar to H1B visas in the US. They are looking for long-term foreign workers to stay for 5-10 year projects in the country.

This is similar to what US has been doing i.e. to increase local hiring and prevent jobs from going to foreign workers. So, they are cracking down quite heavily in on the overuse those visas. Some companies have apparently misused too.

Industry body NASSCOM says that this could be a part-time review considering the fact that they do keep reviewing policies on an ongoing basis.

NASSCOM said that it hadn't heard of any major stringent changes as yet on the Australian policy.

Companies like TCS , HCL Tech and Infosys have a strong presence in Australia. It gives them leverage to larger markets too. So, if at all this does happen, and a larger number of local hires are from Australia, this will have a mid-term impact on increasing costs.